Stuart Oil Shale project ready for restart

Jan 31, 2000 01:00 AM

The developers of the controversial, but potentially huge, Stuart Oil Shale project hope to have Stage One of the
Queensland-based project up and running again soon . After a successful start up of oil shale processing in late
1999, the State One trial was shut down following complaints of odour emissions from neighbouring communities; the
Queensland Government shut down the project.

However, following work on equipment and procedural modifications by the Southern Pacific Petroleum/Central Pacific
Minerals and Suncor Energy joint venture, the project has now been given the all clear to re-start the Phase One
commissioning. Located approximately 15 km north-west of the industrial port city of Gladstone, on the east coast of
Australia, the Stuart deposit contains approximately 3 bn barrels of oil shale resource.

Stuart Stage 1 is SPP/CPM's first oil shale development, and the first application of the ATP technology on oil shale
in the world. If fully developed, the resource has the potential toproduce over 200,000 bpd.
The development programme involves a three staged development approach to maximise learning and minimise costs. Under
this program production of 85,000 bpd is expected by 2007.

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